Lawson

 

 

The ride out to where the butterflies were was as long and bumpy as it was beautiful. Charlie had explained that we were to follow them. Our convoy of two vehicles would head east toward the neighbour’s property. He explained they normally flew the helicopter over, but with this many people, it couldn’t happen. Strangely enough, I didn’t mind the drive.

I’d always thought myself to be more of a mountains guy or even partial to the ocean. I’d never even considered the desert to be anything but heat, dust, and flies, but there was a beauty here that I couldn’t find words for.

I doubted I’d survive a summer here, though, and I was grateful for the cool morning. After an age, we came to a fence line. It ran like a rickety spine up the scorched red back of this land. Land that baffled me as to how anything survived out here. How Charlie and Travis ever farmed this dirt was a mystery to me.

We followed the fence north for a while, until a four-wheel drive came into view on the other side of the fence. I saw, then, a man who stood by his vehicle, next to an open gate. Charlie drove through, we followed, and we both came to a stop.

“This must be Greg,” Jack mused, shutting down the engine. He was mid-forties, maybe, with blond-grey hair. Charlie and Travis were already out and shaking hands with him, their friendship evident by their smiles. Jack and I got out of the Defender. The autumn heat here was as hot as a summer day back home.

Greg greeted us with a warm handshake and the kind of smile I was starting to think was an Outback thing. “Welcome to Queensland,” Greg said, “where the good folk live. Not like them Territorians.” He gave a pointed nod to Travis and Charlie with a good-natured grin. “Thank you both so much for coming.”

“It’s no problem at all,” I reassured him. “I’m excited to see these butterflies. I hope they are what I think they are.”

Greg gave me a hard nod. “Me too. Charlie tell ya ’bout the pipeline they wanna run through here?”

“He did, yes.” I understood why I was here, without any doubt. They’d been very honest about it from the start. Their interest was not in the butterfly like mine was. Their interest in the butterfly was in hope it might stop the government staking a claim on Greg’s land. I cared not for motive. I had my eyes set on the finish line, and that was to find a butterfly in a country it shouldn’t be found in. I smiled at Greg and clapped my hands together. “So, if we’d not like to waste anymore time, let’s go find them.”

Greg grinned at me. “I like you already, son.”

We each took our respective vehicles in a convoy further northeast into Greg’s property. There was still red dirt as far as the eye could see, but there were more patches of greenery, thickets of khaki against the red under the bluest sky I think I might have ever seen.

“It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?” Jack asked, breaking the silence.

“I was just thinking that very thing.” I gave him a smile. “I’m getting excited about what we might find today.”

Jack laughed. “I can tell. You’re doing that knee-bouncing thing.”

I tried to keep my leg still. “I am concerned, though. What if it’s not what we’re hoping to find? That is, what will become of Greg’s farm?”

Jack reached over the console and took my hand. “Whatever we find today is not your responsibility. If it’s not the African butterfly, then there’s nothing you can do to change that. You’re here to simply identify, catalogue, and report.”

I took comfort from the gentle squeeze of his fingers and went back to watching the landscape.

Finally, we came to a stop in front of a line of trees atop a bit of ridgeline. There were eucalypt trees, but also the Grewia insularis. It was a smallish treelike shrub with yellow flowers that I’d only seen in photographs. Finding that plant spiked my excitement because it was the only plant the White-barred Emperor laid its eggs upon and a favoured plant of the caterpillar to eat. It was also a significant find in its own right. That nervous excitement was now becoming a full-body, jittery feeling.

“Wow,” I said, walking over to the edge of the ridge, which I could now see was a creek bank. If it could be called a creek. There was barely enough water in it to constitute a trickle.

I didn’t realise Charlie, Travis, and Greg were standing beside me until Charlie spoke. “What’s wow?”

I took a leaf of the Grewia insularis between my forefinger and thumb, rubbing it, then smelling the oily residue it left on my skin. “This plant,” I started, then turned to look for Jack. He was pulling my research tubs from the back of the four-wheel drive. “I’ll need Jack to verify―he’s the botanical one―but I do believe this plant is a new find. In Australia, anyway.”

“This plant?” Greg asked. “It runs north, right along this creek for miles.”

“Well, if it is the Grewia insularis, it’s only typically found in Africa and on Christmas Island. What it’s doing here in the middle of the Australian Outback, is anyone’s guess.”

“But it’d explain why an African butterfly would be found here, though, wouldn’t it?” Travis asked.

I nodded. “Indeed, it would.” Their smiles became grins, so I added, “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.”

Jack walked over to the shade of the gum tree and put the tubs down in the dirt. He pulled the lid off the top one, fished out my digital barometric reader, and handed it to me. We’d done this together so many times now, we had it down to an art. I took my usual readings and made notes while Jack started in on the plant. He photographed, measured, documented, took foliage samples, flowers and fruits included. While he sat himself in the shade and referenced the plant with known botanical sites online, I went about searching for a butterfly. Crouching down to inspect the underside of the foliage, I checked the closest shrub for evidence. I found some old egg casings, which I collected, and there was evidence of chrysalises, but no butterfly.

I stood up and looked down the embankment. It was a mix of shale and red dirt, only four feet deep at this point. The water was just a few inches deep and maybe a metre wide.

Charlie, Travis, and Greg left us alone to do our work, mostly. “You can walk down the embankment,” Charlie said. “It gets steeper further north. Becomes more of a rock face, but you can get down here easy enough. Those plants are down there too.”

He was right. The bank was easy to climb down where we’d parked our vehicles, and I could see the ridgeline was taller further off in the distance, rising up several metres from the creek below it. “How far did you say this creek ran?” I asked Greg.

“About fifty miles or so. It’s spring-fed from the Artesian Basin.”

“And these plants are found right along that distance?”

He nodded. “Pretty sure it’s them. The cattle don’t touch ’em, so I never paid much attention to ’em, to be honest.”

I picked up the three research tubs and called out to Jack to let him know where I was going. “Jack, I’m heading north up the creek.”

He put the iPad down. “I’ll come with you. I’m still waiting for an official ID on the plant. Don’t know how long it will take.”

I jumped down the small ledge and waited for Jack to join me. He took the two top tubs from me, and we walked further up the creek bed with the others following not far behind us. It was maybe half a kilometre up when I stopped. I put the tub into the sand and took out my camera. The creek was a little wider here but still only a few inches deep, so I simply walked to the other side. The embankment was steep, a geographical timeline spanning a million years in lines of red shale and sand. But there were also shrubs dotted along the cracks, fed by the creek.

I crouched down to inspect the underside of the leaves and found what I was looking for. A caterpillar. Chrysalis casings, more caterpillars. I took a run of photographs and must have disturbed a branch at just the right time because there was a flutter of brown and white, and I was suddenly face-to-face with a butterfly.

About a six-centimetre wingspan, with a very distinct white bar across its hindwing, copper-brown and black scales. It was beautiful.

It was also a Charaxes brutus.

I was certain.

I stood up and grinned at Jack, who was standing with the others just a few metres away on the other side of the creek. Charlie looked at me, then at him and asked, “What does that look mean?”

Jack laughed. “Well, Lawson only smiles like that for two reasons: me or butterflies.”

“He found it?” Travis asked excitedly. “It’s the African one?”

I nodded. “I found it.” Then I amended. “Well, I’m almost certain. But I’ll need to send the photos for verification. Get samples and take some specimen, if I can.” I looked at Jack. “Would you mind getting the bag of spoilt fruit from the back of the four-wheel drive?”

“I’ll grab it,” Travis said, already turning and jogging back the way we’d come.

Jack opened the research tubs and took out specimen jars. He leapt the small creek easily and helped me collect egg casings and an empty chrysalis. Travis came back and set the bag down, as I instructed. “Rip it open and let the fruit spread out like a banquet.”

Twenty minutes later, while Jack and I were still busy documenting what we’d collected, Charlie called out, “Uh, guys?”

I looked over to him to find all three men facing the bag of ruined fruit. Like vultures to a carcase, the White-barred Emperor had come. There were over a dozen, maybe more. Fast and fluttering, they flew seemingly without purpose, skipping on the air, but were zoning in on the fruit. I could see why Travis first thought they were small birds.

I grabbed the camera and splashed into the water, quickly snapping as many photographs as I could, zooming in for every minute detail. Jack slowly edged in, and without disturbing them, he picked up half a browned peach and smeared the juice and softened flesh on his hand. Then he just stood there with his hand outstretched and waited.

It didn’t take long. One butterfly flittered over to him, settling on his finger. Jack’s grin widened as the butterfly began drinking from his skin with its proboscis. “This never gets old,” he said with a look of wonder.

And I would never tire of seeing him like that. Smiling at the awe of the simplest of things.

I laughed from behind my camera, taking photo after photo.

By this time, an entire kaleidoscope had arrived for the fruit. “Are all butterflies this fast?” Charlie asked, looking up at the sky.

“No, these are one of the fastest butterflies in the world,” I explained.

“You sound pretty confident that it’s the African butterfly,” Travis said.

I lowered my camera and faced him. “There are many things in this world I am wrong about. Butterflies aren’t one of them.”

Greg’s grin grew wider. “So, it is a rare species? Does this mean we can tell the government to shove their pipe where the sun don’t shine?”

“There is a process. A lengthy one, I’m sure,” I added. “But the sooner I can gather enough evidence, the better.”

“What else do we need to do?” Charlie asked. “Aren’t some photos enough?”

“I’ll send the photos to the National Lepidopterist Society, and I can contact Piers at the Cairns Butterfly Conservatory, and even my old boss, Professor Asterly in Melbourne. I know people who carry weight―”

Jack laughed. “Uh, excuse me, Doctor Gale.”

“Brighton-Gale,” I corrected. It was a kneejerk response.

“Doctor Brighton-Gale,” Jack amended. He turned to Charlie, Travis, and Greg. “Don’t let his modesty fool you. Lawson here is internationally acclaimed at what he does. If anyone in this country, if not the world, carries weight in lepidoptery, it’s him.”

I ignored his compliment. “We still need to respect the process. There are boxes that need to be ticked, the appropriate channels—We need to do this correctly so we don’t trip over red tape that would impede us further.”

“So, what do we need to do?” Charlie asked again.

“Photographic and video evidence is one thing, but a specimen sample would be best.”

“A sample?” Jack asked quietly. He brought his hand in front of his face to look at the butterfly on his hand. “As in a dead sample?”

Jack’s frown at the thought of killing one of these butterflies made my heart squeeze. I shook my head. “Only as a last resort.”

Jack smiled, and Travis clapped his hands together. “Well, Doctor, tell us what evidence we need to get to make this happen.”